Useful, necessary, positive help for the difficult process of growing up.
Emotional strength and resilience are based on habits that can be learned.
Psychotherapist Morin draws on her previous work on habits of mind that help adults in their personal and work lives and families in maintaining and growing emotional health. She meets middle-grade readers where they are, recognizing common challenges in young people’s lives and presenting tools to develop their abilities to stay flexible, positive, and empowered. Stories introduce situations in which a fear of failure, jealousy, or other uncomfortable feelings cause a problem for a young person and examine techniques—based on anticipation, analysis, and action—that could resolve or prevent a future occurrence of the problem. Reflection prompts support readers’ understanding and practice of these techniques. Naming feelings, distinguishing helpful from false anxiety, scheduling times to worry, unplugging from technology, and learning to use calming breaths are among the tools covered. Morin acknowledges that not everything is under a child’s control and addresses situations where bullies abuse power, requiring intervention from a trusted adult. Cartoon illustrations feature children with various skin colors and hairstyles. The list of references speaks to the author’s research; further reading for young readers would have been a welcome addition.
Useful, necessary, positive help for the difficult process of growing up. (Nonfiction. 8-13)Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300848-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Readers of this moving refugee story will celebrate as well.
New in Canada and unable even to understand the language, Tuyet faces a painful operation to straighten an ankle bent by polio years earlier in Vietnam.
Skrypuch continues the story she began in Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War (2012), but it’s not necessary to have read the first to appreciate this true story of healing. Drawing on her subject’s reminiscences, the author describes Tuyet’s operation and subsequent recovery with sympathy and respect. Although this takes place in 1975, it seems immediate. Seven-year-old Tuyet secretly dreams of being able to kick a ball and play with other children. As long as she can remember, she has only been able to watch. Shortly after her adoption by the Morris family, a Vietnamese-speaking woman comes to explain that she will be having an operation. After, another Vietnamese speaker visits her in the hospital and gives her a piece of paper with Vietnamese and English words she can point to when she needs something. Otherwise, this brave child endures this frightening experience without the ability to communicate. Her eventual joy at having red shoes that match and, even better, a brace and ugly brown built-up shoe that allow her to stand on her own two feet, is infectious.
Readers of this moving refugee story will celebrate as well. (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-927485-01-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Pajama Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
Desperate to learn to read, 8-year-old Olemaun badgers her father to let her leave her island home to go to the residential school for Inuit children in Aklavik, in Canada’s far north. There she encounters a particularly mean nun who renames her Margaret but cannot “educate” her into submission. The determination and underlying positive nature of this Inuvialuit child shine through the first-person narration that describes her first two years in boarding school, where their regular chores include emptying “honey buckets.” The torments of the nun she calls “Raven” are unrelenting, culminating in her assignment to wear a used pair of ill-fitting red stockings—giving her the mocking name found in the title. The “Margaret” of the story is co-author, along with her daughter-in-law. Opening with a map, the book closes with a photo album, images from her childhood and from archives showing Inuit life at the time. The beautiful design includes thumbnails of these pictures at the appropriate places in the text and Amini-Holmes’ slightly surreal paintings, which capture the alien flavor of these schools for their students. A moving and believable account. (Memoir. 8-12)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55451-247-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
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